My name is Robin Mays and this year I am participating in my first SPSU Global Game Jam. OMG, this is so exciting!! But, before I go into the events of the past few days, please allow me to give a tad bit of the back story that lead up to this.

I have spent the past 18 years of my life as an audio engineer in Atlanta, Georgia and I have spent the majority (11 years) working for a rapper name Too Short. Along with him, I have worked with many other recording artists over the years from Will Smith to E-40 and I have enjoyed every minute of it.  In 2005, my life took a turn that would take me away from the music and steer me towards game development. I became pregnant with my wonderful son, Tyler and decided to follow a suppressed dream of game programming. So, after taking a major step of going back to school, I enrolled at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Georgia as a Software Engineering major with a concentration in Game Development. Two years later, as the school began to expand its degrees, I added the major of Computer Game Design and Development to my curriculum.  I must admit that till this day, I am utterly insecure about my abilities as a developer. I am surrounded by students that are 97% male and some have a ton more programming experience than I do, yet there I was at the 2010 SPSU Global Game Jam that is under the leadership of my favorite instructor, Professor Jon Preston.

Day 1: Facing My Fears

The day started off with me arriving nervously to campus at about 5:30pm. I was feeling a bit anxious because I knew Dr. Preston wanted me there at 5pm so that I could sign up and get placed in a group. When I finally arrived to the J-Building which was hold the Jam, I was greeted by Dr. Preston and a smile which calmed my nerves almost immediately. I paid my fee, grabbed my T-shirt and headed into the room with all the other participants. The first person to call my name was my classmate Keenan. Boy was I glad to see him. We have shared a few classes over the past year and he and I buddied up at Siege this past year. I glanced over the room to see quit a few of my current and past classmates and began to feel at home. These were people that I had spent hours hashing over projects and papers with. This was family. I was also greeted by some new faces that I had not seen around campus. These were the faces of students from the Art Institute of Atlanta. They were animation students here to meet-up with programmers to create games. I think it is safe for me to say that my programming buddies and I were VERY happy that they decided to attend. OMG, the guys from AIA turned out to be some of the coolest and funniest guys that I have met so far.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see a couple of female faces in the room as well. Though we were all in different groups, we made sure we gave each other eye contact and a smile before he competition began. It was really cool and supporting.  Keenan, his friend Tre and I formed a group right off the bat. I knew that a couple other guys from my scripting class’ group were attending and would be in our group as well but they had not arrived yet so we three decided to through some ideas around for a game. By around 7pm, what we came up with was a very ambitious project. A game created in the UDK platform that consisted of three levels, a ton of sprites, and music. We had not even read the criteria for the competition yet alone didn’t know the theme for this year’s game. Just as we were wrapping things up, our other two member showed up. We ran down the game concept, they corrected our error of not considering the rule and told up this year’s theme. We agreed on the necessary changes and were all off for the night while some of the other groups were just getting settled for a long night of coding and animating sprites.

Day 2: Deception

The theme for this year’s Global Game Jam was “Deception” and boy was it deceiving. Where do I begin? Well, for starters, today was the big test for my group of five. while all the other groups had already started developing their games, this was the first day that our group had for us to jointly sit down and hash out our ideas for our game and delegate responsibilities. I arrived to the Game Jam around 9am in the morning. None of my group members were there yet, so I tried to take the alone time to get us started and caught up. The concept that we agreed on the night before was a top-down shooter game involving a cat, ninja, pirates, and a zombie dragon (don’t ask).

The first of my group members to arrive was George from my scripting class and his friend Mike from Ga Tech that was there to help us with our animations. The first thing that George wanted to do was change our platform from UDK to XNA and to begin creating our classes. Whoa. I have to admit that I wasn’t quit sure that I was ready to do this. I had spent all night going over UDK tutorial and now it was beginning to look like my preparations was all for nothing. George, who came late the night before, began delegating responsibilities. Mike was to start creating the sprites we needed, which he did, and I was to begin coding the game with George. George knew that this would not be a problem for me seeing as how I was in his C# game programming class last semester. He was very comfortable with XNA while I hated it. I was looking forward to creating a game in UDK. This was the type project we have due in two weeks in our scripting class. I bit the bullet and began setting up classes and refreshing my XNA skills. Just as we were figuring out what to use for place holders for our sprites, Keenan and Tre came in. Apparently, they had some models that we could us for our UDK game. George informed them that we were no longer working in UDK but instead programming in C#. At this point I insisted that we look at there models. It is 12noon now. Most of the other groups had solid games almost, if not already working. It was at this time that my group broke off into two sub-groups. Keenan, Tre and I began on the UDK game that we had agreed upon the night before while George and Mike continued with the code I gave them for the XNA game. That right. Same game on two different platforms. Deceiving isn’t it.

Keenan and I kept pounding out our separate levels on two side-by-side computers in the SPSU Gaming Lab while Tre worked on original music for the game. Keenan and I downgraded our game to two levels that were joined by a portal. This we believed we could complete by our 5pm deadline on Sunday. We worked for hours, helping each other with our levels. It was great. I really felt the spirit of the Game Jam. The whole time we laughed with the guys from AIA and conversed with other groups about their games. It was awesome.  I’d dropped my son off at his school which open all day on Saturdays this morning and it was now 7pm. I began saving my level to our shared drive for Keenan who planned to stay all night to work on them some more while George and Mike were still working on the XNA game.  I ended my night at the Game Jam confident that Keenan had it all under control.

Day 3: The Finale

On the last of the Game Jam I did not have a babysitter so my three (soon to be four) year old came along. We arrived at the school at 9:45am. The game lab was a mess. There was food and halves of drinks and empty cans all over the place. Keenan and Tre were still there from the night before. I asked for an update on the game before I sat down to get started completing my game level. A lot had changed. Keenan had almost completed his level with enemies and all. Only thing is there were no cats, dogs, pirates, ninjas, or zombie dragons. This was okay though. We only had a few hours left to complete our game and there was no way that we were going to be able to import the 3D graphics and edit and animate the wire skeletons for each sprite in time. So, I sat down to complete my level.

I am relatively new to Unreal development. This was a learning experience and a test for me. I spent the majority of the competition with a Mastering Unreal Technology book in my lap. Needless to say, my level was coming along slowly. Keenan had been my rock during most of the time we were there and he and Tre were exhausted. They left for a while to get re-energized while I continued at a snail’s pace to complete my level design, add enemies, and create the boss for the end. By the time 1pm came around, I saw groups throwing their hats in on their attempts at finishing their games. I checked in on George and he was having difficulty getting the gun to shoot right. I was still impressed that he was able to get the background, and all the cat and dog sprites working and colliding properly. He game looked really good and it looked like everyone in the group was still helping each other with their games of the same name.
Keenan and Tre came back from there vacation around 2:30pm. SInce non of us were satisfied that we would be able link the two levels in time for our 3:30 deadline, we abandoned my level and instead focused on completing the minor details and adding the boss to Keenan’s level. By the time 3:30 rolled around we still didn’t have a boss but we submitted our game anyway and then relaxed until it was time to demo our game.

Also by this time, I saw another familiar face show up to the Game Jam. It was Andrew G, one of the organizers for Getting Girls in the Game and a gaming instructor at the Art Institute of Atlanta. He was there to help Dr. Preston judge the competition.  All this time, my 3-year-old sat semi-quietly playing Skate on one of the Xbox 360s in the lab. When it was time to move into the next room to demo, the restlessness kicked in and he was all over the place. While other groups were demoing their games, my son was crawling under tables and attempting to run wild all over the room. I decided with our game complete that I should escort him to the car and end his day at the Game Jam. As of yet, I haven’t found out who won the SPSU Game Jam and I wasn’t there to help my group demo our games. Leaving early was not the intended end that I envisioned for my first Game Jam but I still learned a lot.

I would like to conclude my experience with this…Dr. Preston asked each group what they thought they learned from their experience of working with a team and meeting the deadline. Since I didn’t get the chance to answer that question at the Jam, I would like to now. I learned during this competition that it is very important to stick together as a team. I think that someone should volunteer to take the lead and delegate responsibilities to the rest of the team. I also learned the importance of scaling a game down in order to meet the time restrictions of the project. Being over ambitious sounds good, but it is very hard to actually implement